Krauthammer Shows His Ignorance

A more detailed critique of the Krauthammer piece discussed in my last post is here. I would not waste more time on such an uninformed article, but it is apparently being heavily emailed and blogged. Why is it that the most misleading articles seem to be the most popular? Straw men getting knocked down is apparently a very popular spectator sport.

Krauthammer Avoids the Key Question

Charles Krauthammer rants today about Dover and Kansas, but misrepresents much of what Kansas did, and avoids the harder questions. I could not agree with him more that there is no inherent conflict between religion and science, and all the leading intelligent design theorists agree with that point too, so why is he suggesting that they don't? Because he is writing out of ignorance and knocking down a straw man.

The main thing Kansas did was to add to its science standards scientific facts that macroevolutionary theory has a hard time explaining. It does not decrease what kids learn about evolution.

Good science recognizes that theories are provisional and are always open to testing against the facts, even if Krauthammer thinks one of them is the most "elegant" theory in the world. If it is such a wonderfully elegant theory, surely there is no harm in testing it by asking how well it explains the Cambrian Explosion. (Not very well at all.)

Instead of repeating his ad hominem attacks and knocking down straw men, why can't Krauthammer answer this:

What justification is there for insisting that students be taught the evidence for evolutionary theory but banning any evidence against it, like the fossil record of the Cambrian Explosion, which all mainstream scientists acknowledge? What possible basis can there be for banning this information, when many people view this as extremely relevant to evaluating macroevolutionary theory?

Leaps of Faith

Russ Pulliam, in a column on the Indianapolis Star web site, weighs in on the debate over what to teach in schools. He makes some good points about the philosophy inherent in Darwinian theory. Although it is not explicit, his reference to "that kind of evolution" gets at the distinction between microevolution and macroevolution noted in my sidebar. Here are some excerpts:

The debate over intelligent design is not just an argument about how to teach science.

When scientists boldly proclaim the Darwinian theory of evolution, they go way beyond scientific expertise into matters of philosophy and theology.

That is why some Indiana Republican lawmakers are working on legislation to require equal time in the classroom for the intelligent design theory of origins along with evolutionary theory.

. . . .

Plenty of scientists have claimed rights to territory they never really conquered with the theory of evolution. They say that faith has no place in matters of science, that science has its rules of evidence and observation, and that any faith-based approach to origins will step outside those rules.

Yet these scientists have brought their own kind of faith to bear in the assumptions behind evolutionary theory. Some big leaps of faith are found in theories about mankind evolving from the animal kingdom and one species gradually changing into another. That kind of evolution can't be observed or tested in the lab.

I hope that the Indiana legislature goes the route of Minnesota, Ohio and Kansas, and mandates teaching scientific evidence that both supports and challenges macroevolutionary theory, and stays away from mandating intelligent design for now. Such a course of action is obviously good public policy, good science and should be immune from Constitutional challenge.

Unconstitutional Fossils

The Washington Post has an editorial condemning the Dover school board and the Kansas school board and obscuring the facts by equating the actions of both:

This week the Kansas Board of Education voted 6 to 4 to force teachers to include intelligent design's critique of evolution in their curriculum.

As noted previously, the Kansas board emphatically did not mandate teaching intelligent design. The Kansas board merely included more science related to evolutionary theory in its standards. The Post seems to take the position that if you provide kids with any scientific evidence that tends to contradict macroevolutionary theory, that must be "intelligent design's critique," and therefore unconstitutional. Under this logic, the fossils of the Cambrian Explosion (which are now part of the Kansas standards) are unconstitutional. Information about them must be banned from public schools. Presumably Stephen J. Gould's book Wonderful Life, which discusses these fossils, must also be banned? Wow.

I ask again what I asked before:

What justification is there for insisting that students be taught the evidence for evolutionary theory but banning any evidence against it, like the fossil record of the Cambrian Explosion, which all mainstream scientists acknowledge? What possible basis can there be for banning this information, when many people view this as extremely relevant to evaluating macroevolutionary theory?

Gould on the Cambrian Explosion

Here is what well-known Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould had to say about the fossils of the Cambrian Explosion:

The Cambrian explosion is the key event in the history of multicellular animal life. The more we study the episode, the more we are impressed by its uniqueness and of its determining effect on the subsequent pattern of life's history. These basic anatomies that arose during the Cambrian explosion have dominated life ever since, with no major additions. The pattern of life's history has followed from the origins and successes of this great initiating episode. S. J. Gould, Of Tongue Worms, Velvet Worms, and Water Bears, Natural History 104 (1995), 15.

Kansas science standards now include reference to these fossils. And the Washington Post thinks that is unconstitutional.

I wish a major media outlet would do a program about these amazing fossils, and why many lobbyists are trying to keep information about them out of science classes. I wish a reporter would ask a leading politician whether she thinks Kansas was right or wrong to include these fossils in their science standards. Instead of intelligent design, let's have a national debate on the Cambrian fossils.